Extensions of Remarks

February 25, 1987 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS 4091 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS FIGHTING LADY night she watches a couple of unadorable "Oh! Did I hurt you?" she will say after cruiserweights, Louis Coleman and Sher belting someone quite unconsciously. "I jq.st man Griffith, make mud of Egan's art. In completely forget myself!" There is some HON. BILL RICHARDSON the first round Coleman puts Griffith on thing at once frenzied and repressed about OF NEW MEXICO the canvas with his first punch, a parabolic her performance; she is wild, yet mindful of IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES right that could not have halved a sheet of not letting go completely. Which is to say, balsa wood. Griffith then does the same to Wednesday, February 25, 1987 she knocks no one out. Coleman with an equally artless and pillowy At the bell ending the first round Aber Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, through left. Soon all hell breaks loose. Griffith bat crombie slumps in her chair. While her the efforts of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. ters Coleman stupid for an endless minute. fighter is toweled, tutored and greased, she FIELDS] those of us working on boxing reform Coleman, a muscle-bound lug the color of retrieves an ivory linen handkerchief from bittersweet chocolate, is suddenly slack and her purse and, quite delicately, dabs the have been fortunate enough to benefit from the shade of milky tea. His eyes are rheumy the advice of Josephine Abercrombie, a new sweat from her pulse points and brow. Cani and very far away. "It's over," says the ref zales spits into a bucket, though his promot and constructive force in professional boxing. eree. "Not adorable," says Abercrombie. er most certainly does not. In the last session, a bill was passed in this Presently, a tall, guileless girl in a micro In the second round it seems for a body to set up a federally chartered nonprofit scopic bathing suit climbs between the ropes moment that Abercrombie has more endur Boxing Commission to establish uniform holding a card reading ROUND ONE. Aber ance than Canizales. Her guard is still up health standards for boxing. In this new ses crombie is seated near a couple of astro while his is dropping. Canizales takes a stiff nauts, a chirpy Cleveland talk-show host sion, those of us involved, Mr. WILLIAMS, Mr. and Michael Hammond, the tweedy dean of shot to the jaw, and Abercrombie cringes in FLORIO, Mr. HALL, Mr. FIELDS, Mr. YATRON, the music school at Rice University. Aber sympathetic pain. "Sometimes when he and myself will be renewing our efforts. With crombie notes with evident concern that ev fights I think I'm going to die," she says. individuals like Mrs. Abercrombie participating eryone is watching the snaky way the card But her faith never wavers. Nor does her at girl has thrust herself between the ropes tention. Suddenly it is .over. Canizales stops in this reform the sport will be better off. his man with a cute uppercut to the body FIGHTING LADY and into the ring, an endearing maneuver that would raise eyebrows even in Rio de Ja and an irrelevant tap to the ear. The telling <By David Remnick) neiro. "You know, when we started out five blow has a deep thudding sound, much like To Pierce Egan, preeminent scribe of 19th years ago, we had the most elegant girls a car hitting a deer. Abercrombie worries for century pugilism, boxing was "the manly with long white gloves and sequins," Aber a moment over the beaten man. "I hope he's art," a science not recommendable to those crombie says. "That was in the beginning. all right!" A doctor gives the thumbs-up. "who prefer effeminacy to hardihood." Then we let the crowd vote on the outfits." Now Abercrombie takes on a touching, Egan's characters were Englishmen of every The girl climbs out and another bout motherly air. sort: swells and clinchpoops, champions as begins, this one a snappier affair between a "Oh, Orlando," she cries. "I'm so proud of revered as Tom Cribb and Jem Belcher, per pair of bantamweights. One of them is her you!" sonages as marginal as Jack <the Young fighter Orlando Canizales, and Abercrombie For years, for centuries it seems, boxers Ruffian) Fearby and "Big" Ben Brain. notices a Nixonian shadow on his cheeks. have tried to sail between Scylla and Cha There is not a notable woman in all the Not adorable. "I do wish he'd shave before rybdis, a frizzy-haired ex-con named Don magnificent volumes of "Boxiana." his fights, but I guess they'd drum me out King and a wiley Harvard lawyer named If Egan were alive today and furthering of the corps if I suggested it," she says. Bob Arum. King and Arum control the fi his research for his column in the sporting Such is her sensibility. She has all the deli nancial side of the sport. One would not "Weekly Despatch," he might want to cross cate reflexes of a Texas gentlewoman and want to cast any aspersions in this space, the Atlantic and attend the Thursday night all the savvy of a ring rat. She is, in spirit, a but it is not unfair to say that King and fights at the Marriott Brookhollow in Hous benevolent feudal lord, Tolstoyan in that Arum, while of differing casts, have similar,. ton. A shock would await him. The promot regard. When she takes her fighters to char titanic reputations. Few have escaped one or er for the evening's ballroom sock-up does ity balls, as she sometimes does, she lets the other. There are some lucky ones. Sugar not chomp a cigar or affect an electrified them wear the dinner jackets of their Ray Leonard is well served by Mike Trainer, bouffant. Josephine Abercrombie is what choice, "but I won't let them wear blue ruf and young Olympic gold medalist Mark Bre Egan might have called a noblewoman of a fled shirts.'' She once brought four of her land has an honorable handler in Shelly "certain age," her age certainly being 60. fighters to a fancy resort in Florida on her Finkel. There are a few others who speak up She has been married and divorced five private plane. Five miles above sea level she for fairness to the fighter. May their tribe times and lives on a nine-digit oil, gas and taught "the boys" the intricacies of eti increase. real estate fortune left behind by her quette: napkin on the lap, this is the fish For the last four years word has passed in mother, Miss Lillie, and her daddy, Mr. Jim, fork, this is the grapefruit spoon, don't prizefighting that another such figure has the developer of a device that prevents oil drink from the finger bowl, etc. "I didn't entered the business-an immensely wells from blowing out. want them to be embarrassed or uncomfort wealthy woman in Houston who has adored Blue-eyed, .razor-boned and possessed of able," she says. "I'd say 'No! That's wrong!' the prize ring from the moment her parents what Don King calls "a luminescent femi They were cute about it. They want to be took a glamorous three-day train i-ide to ninity," Abercrombie sits nervously at ring better." New York in June 1938 and she saw Joe side in a silk dress and a fine fur coat, three Josephine's own etiquette, when one of Louis knock out Max Schmeling in the first strands of pearls at her powdered throat. her fighters is in the ring, is freewheeling, round. "My mother was just settling her She is nervous for the fighters she promotes to say the least. It is an experience to sit skirts and all of a sudden there was this and the fighters that her proxy, Bob Spag next to her. From the moment the warriors man lying on the canvas! She said, 'You nola, manages for the Houston Boxing Asso come down the aisle in their bathrobes and mean we came all this way to see that?' ciation. She is, however, unperturbed by the climb through the ropes she is, she admits, Well, my mother couldn't understand it, but grease, spit, blood, sweat and other airborne "a shivering wreck." During the referee's in I was just fascinated!" spumes that often lubricate a spectator's structions she assumes an erect posture, her Who could resist the idea of Josephine evening. One night Abercrombie was so en hands balled into tiny, bony fists on her lap. Abercrombie, so primped and perfumed, in a thralled with the victory of her fighter Her guard is up from the opening bell in a sport that smells like the snuffed-out end of Choo Choo Dixon that she embraced him mirror image of Canizales's own defenses. an old cigar? And how did the fight game without mind to her new Adolfo. "The When he bounces off the ropes, so, percepti greet her? "When I got into it, I think ev outfit suffered," she admits gravely, "but it bly, does she. When a left comes whizzing eryone thought I · was playing or kidding survived. I was lucky it was black, blue and toward his chin, Abercrombie's head reacts around," she says one evening at home. "It brown." into her shoulders, turtle like. All the while .was like, Who's that old broad? She doesn't Mrs. A, as many call her, is a discerning she is bobbing and weaving, sometimes know what she's doing.

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